by Robert Brady
A huge fountain had been built outside of the gates to the palace. A statue of the goddess, Life, here depicted as a beautiful girl in a short skirt and large bare breasts, spewed water from her hand in many high, arcing streams. The breasts, of course, nursed the world.
They had probably not been intended for Glennen to cop a feel, but then, I don’t think he asked the sculpture. By even casual observation, he was propositioning her, dressed in a breach clout that accentuated the extreme size of his hairy belly.
“Oh, crap,” I said.
“Oh, I hope he doesn’t,” the squire said. “Although he does pee in the fountain when the mood strikes him.”
As we got nearer, we could hear his slurred speech as he argued with the statue.
“C’mon, gurlie, you can give us a little taste, eh?” he told her. “Maybe jess a li’l dribble? I could do with jess a dribble.”
I rode Blizzard right to the fountain’s edge. “Your Majesty,” I said.
He turned, trying to adjust his bleary eyes. “Who? Lupus, you bastard, issay you?”
I smiled. “It is,” I said. “Can I bring you back to the palace?”
“Not till this bitch here gives me some rec’nition,” he said, scowling. “I’m a bachelor, now, yanno.”
How did I know this would be at the root of it? “Your Majesty, I can get you a woman who would appreciate you, if you want one,” I told him.
He looked at me owlishly. “Not that child you married?” he asked.
Yes, it had been a good idea that not to bring Shela.
“No, some other.”
He squinted his eyes at me. “Not her sister?”
“No,” I said. I held out my hand to him. “Please, your Majesty. Come inside. You must be freezing.”
He looked down at himself. “Yanno, I don’t feel it. But yeah, maybe I will put some pants on.”
He stepped onto the wall of the fountain, put his weight on its slippery surface, and of course did a back flip right into the pool. I saw his head smack the statue.
I don’t think Life had appreciated his offers. Five of my men were off their horses, me with them, as we leaped to his aid.
I knew enough to be careful as we moved him. “Watch his head and neck,” I told them. One man pulled his sword and we tied his head to it with a few rags, then secured the sword’s blade to his back, immobilizing him as best we could. Meanwhile four Eldadorian regular army brought a litter from the palace and we rolled him into it, to bring him back inside and to his rooms.
Hundreds of people saw the debacle. I would have worried about the scandal, except that it had probably been going on since I left. We’d gone way past scandal.
Glennen lay on his bed, sodden and freezing. The room had been built to be lavish, with gigantic bay windows and real glass to look through. The hard wood floor had been polished to a shine, except where our steel-shod boots had marred it. His four-poster bed came with a canopy, piled high with quilts. A table stood by the door and couches by the window, the bed and the far wall, where a gigantic mirror hung.
He hadn’t shaved in several days, but he had been drinking regularly. His son, Tartan, stood to one side of his father as two royal healers tended him. His Oligarchs and I spoke quietly at his tables.
“How long has this been going on?” I asked. I had just dispatched the captain of my guard to bed down the men and stable the horses.
“Since All Gods’ Day,” one of them said – the one I had met first, who had come to Shela and me in our hotel room. It occurred to me that I either didn’t know or didn’t remember any of their names.
“He began drinking early, he drank all day and into the night. Then he started to break things, until he passed out. Two days later he started again.”
“This is what he does now,” another said. They were all male, all Men, and all old. “He drinks, he attacks, and he tells us things that are on his mind.”
“Sometimes they are terrible things,” the third said. Of the four of them, he was the only one with short hair. Like the others, his was white, his robes were white, and he wore sandals. They all carried a twisted oak staff as a sign of office. I didn’t know why.
“He cannot cope with the loss of the Queen,” the first said. “And of course, we can hardly hold him responsible for his actions.”
“Except that we must,” the fourth Oligarch said.
Couldn’t argue with that. I knew alcoholism when I saw it. He wouldn’t stop if he didn’t have to, and he didn’t have to unless his kingdom revolted or someone assassinated him.
This could play right into War’s hands, I thought. No point in taking the King out if he was going to do it for us.
I had seen some sailors go pretty far down this road. Drinking yourself to death is real.
“There is no way to get Tartan to take over in his place?” I asked. Tartan, hearing his name, looked up at us. “Even just as reagent or something, for the duration of his treatment?”
All four shook their heads as one. “Eldadorian law in unique, in that the monarch has all power to rule. Glennen always feared that somehow his Dukes would rise up against him.”
“Can he proclaim a new law?” I asked
They nodded. “You are wise, your Grace,” the second said. “When he is sober, or just a little drunk, we must get him to proclaim that the Heir can assume power in a crisis of health.”
“I will commence the document,” the fourth said.
“No, I am the Heir,” I said. “It should be Tartan – “
“Tartan has no standing to rule,” the third said. “If he were to suddenly take power, it would look like a coupe.”
“And it will look exactly like that if I take over,” I said. “And do you really want me to be in control of Eldador right now?”
“Your recent attack on Outpost IX,” the fourth said.
“You fear that it will be a direct affront to the Trenboni,” said the first.
“I fear that they could use it as justification to retaliate against anything Eldadorian that they want, and legitimize it before the Fovean High Council, which I just royally pissed off,” I said.
They all nodded, and then I realized that my use of slang has been interpreted as I intended. Had they adapted or had I?
Tartan approached us with a healer.
“He will live,” the healer, a white-hair Uman in a yellow robe, said. “You were wise to bind his head – his neck had snapped. We have repaired it.”
“I owe you another debt, your Grace,” Tartan said.
“I am at your service,” I said, inclining my head to him, “and to your family’s service, your Highness.”
“Actually, it is you who are ‘Highness,’ your Grace,” Tartan said. “If I am correct on the rules of etiquette, then highness falls below majesty, and you are the heir.”
“Correct as ever, Prince Tartan,” the third Oligarch said. “You are my brightest pupil.”
He nodded.
I squared off on Tartan, so I could gage him. “We need to get your father well,” I said to him. “Do you agree?”
He didn’t look into my eyes, which I didn’t like. He looked at his father, then the Oligarch’s past me, then at me, but at my face, not my eyes. “I do.”
“And if we can get him to give you the power to rule in his place, until he is well, would you work with us, and be guided by us?” I asked
He looked in my eyes for a moment, and then looked away. “Would I do as you say, and would I give power back to my father when he felt well?” he asked.
I nodded.
He thought about it.
That answered it for me right there. He would agree, but he didn’t know for sure that he meant it.
I’d have to get myself out of this one. I smiled to Tartan and I took his shoulder in my hand for a second, but I excused myself and found where my Wolf Soldiers were bedded down, and joined them.
It had been a hell of a day.
Later in the royal Eldadorian cou
rt, I sat alone on the throne atop the dais, at the end of the long, royal gallery.
One day it would be imperial, I knew. Royal was good enough for now.
“And you can see, your Grace,” the Earl informed me, “the implicit growth of the project affects not only my own earldom, but the Eldadorian nation.”
Blah, blah, blah – the man had been droning on for thirty minutes. The Rule of Fifteens came to mind again, as it often did in such circumstances.
Any meeting that took more than fifteen minutes had a second agenda. Anything that took longer than fifteen seconds to say was probably a lie.
“I humbly add that this nation’s prosperity has astounded the world under your sage leadership…”
Damn, I thought to myself. He is sucking up to me. That is another ten minutes at least.
Eventually they would learn that I didn’t respond well to it, and they wouldn’t do it anymore. The political animal is still an animal. It hunts to survive. It learns its prey’s strengths and weaknesses, or it dies.
I had been in Eldador the port for two days. Glennen had roused this morning for a while, then gone back to sleep. His neck throbbed, and the first thing that he wanted was mead. I had talked him into breakfast tea, but I could smell that they had put something in it when it came. He had ordered me to sit for him at court, then rolled over and gone back to sleep.
I think the Earl wanted to build a granary or something. I missed that part of the dissertation. Really didn’t matter because I planned on telling him, “No,” regardless.
I wished I were with Shela. It looked like I would be sending for her.
“You munificent opulence has changed Fovea for all time…”
I wondered what ‘munificent’ meant.
Having or showing great generosity.
I started on the throne. The Earl either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
You need to know these ‘three dollar words’ if you want to rule these people.
I had a feeling that War hadn’t asserted Himself to correct my grammar.
You think you do great things?
“I hope to,” I thought in my mind, knowing that He would hear it.
And I stood in a field, feeling the hot sun on me, my calloused hands on the plow before me, the smell of my own sweat mingled with the hearty funk off the horse before me, of the newly turned earth beneath my feet.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked toward the great city, Eldador, where I had never been. Even now more masons were hauling more stones to her, as if more stores would make her greater, as if the sun could not set on enough of it.
“I paid for those stones,” I thought to myself, bitterly. “A share in 6 of everything I own, to the drunken king for his wine and his stones and his better life, while I live in a stick house with a roof that might leak.”
And I stood on the solid, wood decks of the newest of the cutters pulling from Eldador the port, and I wore the uniform of a boatswain and looked up in pride at the Eldadorian flag, flying from the mizzen.
The first mate had told me that most sailors die at sea, the rest are lucky if the scurvy and the whores don’t leave them too twisted to lead a normal life. I didn’t care; my father and his before me had been sailors and I would be one as well.
“Mount the main and hard aport,” the first bellowed. The quartermaster spun the wheel and we picked up the breeze. The mains’l snapped and billowed out in all of her glory, the spray from the prow of White Stallion splashed on my face and filled my nostrils with her salty spray.
To one side of the quarterdeck stood a squad of Wolf Soldiers. Haughty bastards who had never smiled in their whole lives, who never drank with the crew, who never did anything but kill or plan to kill – they are a plague on Eldador in my opinion. The Heir put them everywhere to remind the rest of us how things would be when the King’s health finally failed him.
Gendine, my best friend, clapped me on the shoulder, seeing my glare. “Be still, Vark, they are blooded veterans, and you are still a ‘wog.”
That they were. I ran to the rigging, my bare feet gripping the planks beneath me as the ship topped a swell.
That didn’t make me like them.
And my woman screamed, from our one room home in Thera. I paced outside the door, on the street, passersby nodding their respect to me or, if they knew her, giving me their good wishes.
The midwife tended her, I assured myself. The midwife knew what to do.
I couldn’t even afford to replace the bedding after her labors. At best I might replace the straw ticking and turn the mattress. The bed covers lay on the dirt floor.
This great land of prosperity called Eldador; it had not been so great for me. I had come to here a Volkhydran, my Lord’s gristmill empty and his water wheel spinning free. There was nothing there anymore. There would be nothing for a long time.
In Eldador they took almost no tax, and so all of the mills were hiring. That didn’t mean that they had room for a Man. Men were lords in Eldador, Uman worked the mills and the fields and the armories. Uman would hire 1,000 more Uman before they gave a wage to a Man.
My woman screamed again, bringing forth a new voice to this world, a new mouth to feed. Whether it would be my son or daughter anyone might guess. My woman is a whore, bringing wage to the table while I go from mill to farm to factory, begging for the chance to earn a wage.
She screamed and I could imagine that she blamed me, for my mistake to come here.
“Enough!” I shouted. The whole court jumped before me. The Earl became quiet, looking bewildered at my rage.
I had misspoken myself. I stood, and I glared at the Earl.
“You think that I am a child, that you can massage my ego and impress me?” I demanded of him.
He blanched. Lupus the Conqueror was a killer. They all knew what I had done to Sammin.
“Leave me,” I demanded. “Court for the day is adjourned.”
One of the Oligarchs approached me but I glared him away. A mural of Alekanna to the left behind the throne worked as a door and I used it. Let the masons make a new secret entrance for the security of the Heir. I wasn’t in the mood to be protected.
This is beneath you.
“Apparently it is not,” I snarled, knowing that the one I snarled at had the pain. That if He invoked the pain, then I would be helpless and do anything He wanted.
You are the instrument of War, he informed me. You do what you must, and what no one else can.
“Whatever that is.”
I took long strides down the back halls, to the King’s quarters, from where I could get to my own. I could hear the steps of the squires who attended me – no less than three for the Heir, no less than five for the King.
The Fovean Kings underestimate your ambitions. They still believe that they can control Eldador politically.
“I am sure that Constantine XI thought the ambitions of a twenty-one-year-old Sultan could be solved politically until Mehmed II overran Constantinople in 1453.”
As you have demonstrated with Outpost IX.
“I didn’t think it would be lost on You,” I said. “I thought the world should see what I would do to anyone who came after me.”
Which is not the only reason that I did it, and which He surely knew. People love to follow men who are ‘fearless’, because they can lose themselves in their maniac ambition. It is a lie to say that if you have nothing then you have nothing to lose. If you have nothing then you have everything to gain with the right person leading you.
My whole life demonstrated that.
You near your purpose, then, instrument.
Would I make the world better if I controlled it all? I would certainly make it better for me. History showed that kind of thing wouldn’t benefit too many more people.
The Egyptians had enslaved entire races at the height of their power. They had buried their wealth in giant pyramids just to prove that they could do it.
The Eldadorians held apartheid-style d
ominance over their subjected Uman people. They enjoyed a better lifestyle now, but if this capitalist experiment were to fail, would it be Man or Uman whose children did without? Would I have or want Uman nobles in my realm? Would Sammin be dead now if he were a Man?
As for me…
I pushed open another concealed door and I entered the King’s apartments. Glennen wasn’t here – there were too many drinking hours left in the day for that. His squires would drag his drunken body in here, shave him and bathe him and put him to bed, when the booze had overwhelmed him.
I was kidding myself thinking that I could have plied him off with some tea.
“There is a price for everything, my love,” Shela had told me.
When I had prayed to War, he had warned, “You have barely begun to do as I desire.”
Now I thought I knew what he wanted.
“The gifts of War are not without price,” I quoted my wife.
Nor should they be.
“I was a loser about to die, and you made Lupus the Conqueror, the White Wolf, Scourge of Trenbon, blooded bounty hunter, the Killer of Conflu.”
I made nothing. That is not the way it works.
“But there is also Rancor the Just, the liberator, the avenger. The one who humbled Outpost IX – the only one.”
That is as much you as the other, but this is made of your own choosing, your own free will. That is how it works, instrument. It is all free will.
“And now it is before me to take the next step, open the doors and fulfill the mission of my god.”
This is what you are brought here for.
“Just because it looks like I can do this thing, does that mean I should?” I asked quietly.
You are the servant to a god. You must learn to separate yourself from what you, as His instrument, may or may not do. You must have faith.
“Faith, or pain, you mean.”
If that is how you must understand it.
“That doesn’t sound very much like free will.”
If a god could be frustrated, as I am sure a god could, then I could sense it in War. He was not used to having His will questioned.
You are already aware that you cannot trust Tartan Stowe, he told me.
